October 2019 Game Night

Let's start with one of the Catan memes in the Casa Beej game night slide show. We'll start with the one that graces the sidebar:

That's one of my favorites. One will follow each month.

Joining me this October were Paul and Pete, so we were down to 21st century game night founders.

We dined on Taco Bell tacos (two kinds) plus corn chips with green salsa and cheese sauce.

And Pete and Paul had their specific dietary needs met.

I bought two taco party packs and the kid at the cash register asked me if I wanted it for there or to go. I told him I appreciated his confidence in me but it has been several decades since I could attempt that.

Plus chocolate chip cookies. The house brand of Labatt Blue Light in 12 ounce cans and the usual assortment of non-alcoholic beverages was available.

The arcade game was turned on. And the Michigan-Penn State game was on the TV. Let's speak of that no more. I feel sorry for Bell. Let's not blame him when there were plenty of other mistakes in the game that made his dropped catch less than the critical play.

We started playing at around 7:30 and wrapped up gaming at about 11:00 p.m. Pete had to "move a piano" Sunday morning while Paul was preparing to "get a colonoscopy," or something like that.

Inquiring minds want to know whether these are the same as "going to a bed & breakfast."

First, a short film on "Daving" the resource cards.

During the night, I was red, Pete was white, and Paul was orange. We used the harbormaster variant.

The dice tower was used, of course. Still no rivals to the glory of my history major engineering.

Game one was a horror show for bricks. I set up the board before anyone arrived.



I was tempted to rearrange the resource hexes to correct that problem but did not interfere with the randomness of fate.

I will say that "2" came up far more often than you'd expect. The lack of bricks had an obvious effect, with Paul building the most roads--6! It was a race to get to 11 points as Paul had the longest road and Pete had three points of harbor and room to get to 6 points of harbor, and my options capped at 4 points barring a major effort that Paul could interdict. But I made it.

No development cards were purchased. The lack of rock explains that. Funny but given the brick shortage I forgot about the equal lack of rock until now.

Game two had a much better distribution of resources other than rocks. I suffered with no rocks in my portfolio.



Paul grabbed the harbormaster while I had the longest road. Pete had the chance of taking my longest road and could have taken the harbormaster card. I was hoping to block Paul from taking it from me.

The maneuvering was intense and I had three roads in my hand to build to the coast at the 10 forest and 8 wheat. Pete sensed a disturbance in the Catan Force and before I could place my roads he build a road toward the coast where he later built a settlement. I had to turn to the other coast instead of blocking Pete's longest road and extending mine to a more safe edge. Drat.

But then on one turn Pete was very generous and accommodating in trading with me and Paul. Since he seemed to be running neck and neck with us, we suspected nothing. Then Pete, who actually bought three development cards in the game, built and then whipped out his two victory point cards.

I have to say I laughed quite a bit at that. Bravo.

Game 3 had a pretty good distribution of resources, finally.



Paul had the harbormaster while I got the longest road. I had a couple knights and was aiming for that in case I lost the longest road, or if I couldn't build more settlements after losing that. I think I built that settlement to get to 11. Pete grabbed a whole lot of rock with his monopoly card.

Game four had a pretty normal resource selection.



In this game Pete and Paul conspired to have Paul build two roads to block my potential link up of my two road systems. Sixes were very good to me this game and with the rock port I was doing fine. After being blocked in the middle I noticed that a mere 5 roads would get me the longest road, so I did that and reached 11, and we ended gaming at 11:00 p.m.

We watched Game of Thrones season 5, episode 3. Pete headed out early, before the boobs. Nobody wanted coffee so we skipped that. We wrapped up at midnight (!), but at least I got plenty of sleep and suffered zero ill effects from many tacos and cookies.

After Paul left I "cleaned up and put the game away," whatever that means.

Thanks for a good game night! Hopefully the near-regulars will be here next month before the snows arrive and block the roads from the far corners of Michigan.

And without further explanation having nothing to do with October ratings sweeps month, I present this. No nudity but possibly NSFW:


I was about 5 feet from her performance recently in Las Vegas in the Atomic Saloon Show. And now non-hula hoop-based entertainment is completely insufficient.

I'll be in my bunk.

Luckily I get along with my editor quite well so I can get away with these digressions from the topic.

And we should do the glorious 3D version that Paul made again just to get it on the public record on this new fully operational game night blog.